I find I can do more with less in the 5E design, and the players seem more vested in who their characters are instead of exclusively in what their characters can do. It's more conducive to RP and less conducive to Power gaming/Min Max. You CAN still PG/MM, but it doesn't overshadow everyone else like it would in PF if someone made a RP based character vs a MM character.

To sum up, I see it as their own version of the Advice thread started so long ago, but in their own words and view. The aim being to take someone unfamiliar with a class and how it plays, then showing them how to build one that can be effective in a group adventure. All the while giving options so the player can build something they like.

The stonestrike bonus to hit and damage caps at +5 at level 20. Again, this stacks with any other bonus you may have. Stone strike is not actually enchanting your weapon, it's just giving you a bonus to hit and damage and letting you bypass some DR and Hardness. If you had a +5 weapon, you would be at a total +10 to hit and damage. It will also stack with any defensive stance powers, competence or morale bonuses and so on.

Great, thank you. This is actually better than I thought! I appreciate your time to answer, and I really look forward to playing the class in the campaign. Wish me luck! I have a feeling I will need it!

Sorry to keep bothering you, but thanks so much for being helpful. Ok, so to beat coldiron and silver the weapon itself would need to be +3. And with stonestrike activated it would also defeat magic and adamantine.

Final question, then I will leave you in peace lol. Is the limit of stacking the weapons bonus and my stonestrike bonus on to hit and damage +6? Or could it go over +6 at higher levels?

Slight derail, but Stonelord changes the Paladin so much it should be a separate class IMO. There are more differences between a Stonelord and core Paladin than a Cavalier and Samurai.

It does. But man it really gets some nice things. It is definitely the way to go for a dwarf paladin type. I am going to be using one in a mythic ROTRL game, can't wait. I'm just trying to get a good handle on understanding it in case my GM has questions and I can intelligently answer them. I know it's not a class people see everyday.

The stonelord bonus to hit and damage on a stonestrike is not listed as an enhancement bonus, but rather is unnamed. This is good and bad. It's good in that it will stack with anything. It is bad in that it will not count as an enhancement bonus for bypassing DR.

I don't understand. Do you mean it would count for stacking with the weapons enhancement for both to hit and damage bonus, but not be included in overcoming DR? Or that the higher of the two would only count towards DR?

At +1 and +2 Stonestrike, I still only overcome DR/Magic and Adamantine. But starting at +3 (Level 10), I would overcome DR/Magic, Adamantine, Silver, and Coldiron. Is this correct? And as my weapon bonus increases I ignore more DR types.

That brings on the question then, what happens when my weapon is made +2 and I use Stonestrike +3 with it, for example. Does it become +5 total and there ignore up to +5 listed DR's?

Hmmm. I was hoping that I had just overlooked something and that this ability would be more awesome than I thought. I mean, just to heal my elemental (which costs 2 LOH) or channel against a stone creature(uncommon), seems hardly worth it. I'm not sure if my GM would be opposed to me taking an alternative channel instead, but I feel at this point if I can, I will. My LOH's are better served to stance-cycle as mentioned, which is one of the Stonelords best options early game.

So now about his Stonestrike ability. It says that the weapon counts as both magic, and adamantine, and that it also will ignore hardness equal to double his level. Does this mean that the weapon would bypass DR since it is counted as both magic and adamantine?

I'm confused about this ability. Specifically, why does the stonelord get it? Is it only to heal his earth elemental summon? Or is it also used to heal the stonelord himself, since starting at level 2 he starts to become stone like. Nowhere does it say (until level 20) that he is considered of the earth element type. I just don't see the benefit of this channel if it is only used on his summon elemental, which is weaker than it should be at the levels he gets it. He even gets channel earth before the elemental, you think that would be reversed.

So if it is only for the summoned elemental healing, or of course the channel against stone creatures, may as well pick an alternate channel ability instead that would be more useful.

This sculpt is fantastic. No way I'm passing this up. Straight to my collection of Paizo dragons you go! This raises the bar big time for future dragon sculpts. Now we just need an announcement for the next Dragon Evolution package of chromatics.

The most heard complaint in my circles is that the Warpriest just doesn't shine well enough. A cleric heals and casts better, while fighting about as well. A Paladin fights better, while healing just as well. I felt a Warpriest should be a class that buffs his party or debuffs his opponents WHILE beating them down. I hit the monster and rally everyone around me giving them bonuses, or I hit the monster and cripple it a few turns giving it negatives.

The whole mental image though was of a priest that fights in war and rallies the troops while demoralizing the enemy, he represents his god in battle as if the gods themselves where there to fight. I don't get that vibe with the current iteration of Warpriest, and a lot of that has to do with action economy as well as too much MAD.

Of course I understand this class could easily be tweaked to be overpowered and as such great care is being taken not to make it so that it overshadows the other classes. I just feel right now it isn't standing on it's own just yet.

Luck Blessing
Deities: Calistria, Desna, Shelyn.
Unlucky Presence (minor): At 1st level, as a swift action
you can cause an adjacent opponent to become unlucky. If
you succeed at a melee touch attack, that opponent takes a
–2 penalty on AC against your attacks and saving throws
against your spells.
Unlucky Enemy (major): At 10th level, as an immediate
action you can force an adjacent opponent to reroll an
attack, saving throw, or check it just attempted before the
result of the roll is revealed; it must take the lower of the
two rolls.

Quick Channel
Benefit: You may channel energy as a move action by spending 2 daily uses of that ability.

Charm Blessing
Deities: Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Norgorber, Shelyn.
Charming Presence (minor): At 1st level, as a standard
action you can touch an ally to grant an entrancing
blessing. For 1 minute, the ally becomes mesmerizing
to her opponents, either out of admiration or fear. This
functions as sanctuary, except if the ally attacks, it only
breaks this effect with respect to that opponent. This is a
mind-affecting effect.
Dominance Aura (major): At 10th level, as a standard
action you may surround yourself with a tangible aura
of charisma for 1 minute. While this is active, once per
round as a swift action you may issue a command (as the
command spell) to one creature within 30 feet, who must
succeed at a Will saving throw or submit for 1 round.

So.....
1. Swift action to make a touch attack attempt to cause -2 to ac and saves against you.
2. Move action to use quick variant channel Tyranny(which the creature gets a -2 to save from your swift action) to cause channel penalties to saves vs compulsions, pain, and stun for 1 minute. (So -3d6 vs compulsion for example).
3. Standard use Dominance Aura and get to command a creature once per round for 1 minute as a swift action.

This has a lot of potential if I am doing that right. You could ruin someone's day with that combo AND role-play the heck of that scene! Use it as a free trip even on creatures far bigger than you. Use it to call a creature to you that is attacking your squishy magic user and make him provoke attacks of opportunity while doing so.

Just finished a Marathon Campaign with a Warpriest. Got to Level 18 before he died, admittedly do to bad rolls for reflex saves against a Dragon, but honestly it felt more like I was playing a Crusader Cleric Gestalted with a Weapon Master Fighter than a unique class...

I definitely feel it would be better suited as an Archetype or maybe even split into 2 Archetypes. It is overly M.A.D. especially if you aren't using a higher Point Buy or Roll very good stats.

** spoiler omitted **

Could you give more details on how the class played at various levels and what build you went with? How it performed according to the purpose it was made for?

Just a thanks to Mike Shel again, my players are loving this module so far. There have been some great RP moments and intense battles so far. We are not even half way through the adventure yet! Really looking forward to the grand finale but really enjoying the ride there as well.

Serious question, could a 16 Musket Master with Rapid Shot,Haste, Alchemical bullets, and a Beneficial Bandolier,use dead shot and gain two more attacks added to his base of four attacks? Meaning Dead Shot would now roll 6 dice instead of four? Since those would be the full round action pool of all his potential attacks.

Just make it a cartoon show and you will have a whole generation of kids growing up talking about how in the day they used to watch Pathfinder Adventures every Saturday morning on TV. Soon enough those kids will be playing table top RPG's and again talking about their adventures they shared.

Then they will get older and meet women and forget about Pathfinder for awhile, it happens. Later, as they get yet older still and now have money, they will see a Pathfinder product on the shelf and pick it up, remembering all those good old adventures on TV and around the table, and they will play it again!

You can thank me later!

P.S. No seriously, make a TV cartoon for Cartoon Network, it's a no brainer. I will personally pitch in for funding it on Kickstarter if you do.

The Large Red is the same size as the Medium white. No chance to change the Large red to something.....larger? Maybe? Or am I looking at the wrong one? Is the one in the middle the Large red and the one on the left is the medium?

So I set up the PFS event for a home game, but I was wondering something maybe you folks can answer for me. When I do I report the Dragon's Demand completed if running in campaign mode (the whole story)? Since this will take more than one night to complete, do I just wait to report it until we are finished with the whole story? Or do you report each chapter separately as they are completed?

When picking the module for the home game pfs event, it doesn't give you chapters as an option, only the whole module. Thanks for any answers!

Joe, as to your inquiry about running campaign mode but then a player having to abandon ship partway through for whatever reason, I would do the following two things:

1) Ask the player if he would like to receive credit for what he had already played.
2) If yes, then assign Chronicle sheets for those parts that he played.
2.1) If no, just scratch the name off the reporting sheet.

I only include the first part because there's any extra something special included in the module's rewards for playing the whole thing—the fourth Chronicle sheet. Based on my recollection of assigning Adventure Path credit when doing "campaign mode," especially for those who start an AP without considering the PFS credit, gathering the reporting information can be done after the fact. I also understand it's an entirely voluntary, opt-in way of getting credit, and I can't think of any reason for these larger modules not to work the same way when doing campaign mode.

In that way, that person could come back and try to play the whole module in its entirety and get all four sheets later.

If this is inadvertently flying in the face of an earlier ruling that I've missed, kindly point it out, and I'll revise accordingly. Even if step 1 doesn't happen, it's only hurting a few corner case situations.

So in Joe's example, where the player played a chapter in campaign mode but was later unable to finish the story in it's entirety, he could receive credit for the section he played.

Now I understand if a player plays in module mode (where you only play a small portion of a chapter and not the entire chapter), you cannot be eligible for the 4th bonus chronicle and will only receive 3 chronicles, one for each chapter you played.

Back to Joe's example though, the player was playing the module in campaign mode but couldn't finish the whole story, so would he be able to take a chronicle for the chapter he played, and then later if he finished the rest of the story (not in module mode but in campaign mode), would he be eligible for the other 2 chapter chronicles and the 4th bonus chronicle? My gut tells me yes since he experienced the whole story in campaign mode eventually. Whereas module mode you only play a portion of each chapter and do not see the whole story.

Suppose I run the module on "campaign mode," but not every player is able to make it to every game session. Could I award individual chapter chronicles to players who complete some but not all of the module with me, and award all four chronicles (3 chapters + 1 bonus) to any players who complete the whole thing with me? Or are the chronicles on campaign mode "all-or-nothing"?[/b]

The blog a while back left me with the impression that they are "all-or-nothing," but I'm hoping that's not the case.

For that player they would get the 1 chapter they completed as a chronicle because they completed that section. They would not get access to the bonus sheet until they completed chapter 2 and 3. The players that play all the way through to the finish get 3 sheets and a bonus sheet. So you get a sheet for what you completed and put the time into.

If a player jumps in at chapter 2 not having played chapter 1 or 3, he will get a sheet for that chapter for having completed it as if he played in module mode. Doesn't matter if your running a full campaign, the credit is based off of what the player completed. One sheet per chapter, and a bonus sheet if you completed all three. Simple and easy, the way I like it!

Just got mine and I must say, very nice! Especially the new monsters that have no representation in any other format. I started off just needing more kobolds lol, saw all the other goodies included and for the price, it's a no brainer if you want to run this module...get these paper mini's!

It uses Bestiary 1,2, and 3...and had 2 new monsters in it. I believe the Bestiary 2 box is coming out soon in the pawns, so you would need to proxy just a little for the bestiary 3 monsters. The big bad you will already have in the B1 pawns. And most of the subs you will find good alternatives to so it's not really an immersion killer.

Or you could wait until Bestiary 3 box comes out! I can't wait that long though lol.

Anything that encourages playing the whole module is preferred. One thing about AP's I didn't like was that only one small part of each path gave PFS credit, that is a lot of content left unused for PFS. Some is better than none, but for the modules I would love to see 6 levels worth of xp to really get people to play them more. In divided doses of course if time is limited.

If it is designed like the AP's where you basically do one of the major encounters out of each of it's 6 parts, you could get 6 credits worth of PFS and be level 6 by the finish. If it is only 3 credits worth, which would only be 1 per chapter, then you couldn't run the whole module based off of PFS credit and level your characters correctly.

At that point you would have to either pick out the three parts and run them when you characters can, filling the in between levels with other modules or PFS scenario's, or you could just run the whole thing and then retro-actively apply the credits to a PFS character of your choice.

I'm hoping it is 6 per module, as this would allow you to play the whole story with the character you want to use the credit for. 3 credits means you will need to use a fill in character if you want to do the whole story through, unless you want to interrupt the story to give your character time to level up for the next part (not preferred as it takes away from the immersion for me).

As far as content goes, however, I don't see why you couldn't get enough credit for PFS to obtain 6 levels. There are plenty of adventures and dungeons in there to do it.

I really like the new format. It definitely gives you much more room for side quests and adventures that aren't directly tied to the main story but help the characters progress. These are a nice addition to make the place feel more alive.

Three main chapters and the module is broken down for you as to when the characters should level up. So it may say, " Your characters should reach level 3 before tackling such and such dungeon. " The main town is pretty well fleshed out with the included map showing you the main points. The other side of the map is a dungeon area. Inside the module itself there are many nice maps and even handouts, the handouts I would Xerox copy and give out, I'm not cutting up my module!

There are two new monsters for this adventure, one low level and one high level. Both look interesting and the high level one is particularly creepy I must say. You do NOT want to be in the forest with this thing ha!

It's looking like you can get six PFS credits out of this module per level. Level 7 is obtainable, however, if you do the entire module and all side quests. I can't say for sure there are 6 PFS credits or 3, but it looks like you have one major encounter per level so I don't see why not. This is just a guess right now so take this part with a grain of salt, I don't really know how PFS and modules will interact now, a single credit or more like Adventure paths with multiple parts giving credit.

The overall quality is nice, the story is pretty open for adventuring and role play, I really can't say there is anything I don't like at the moment. If you are afraid that your one and done nights with modules is over I think you won't have to worry about that. The module can be used in sections (the main 3 chapters) and there is no reason you can't just run a section and save the rest for another day/campaign fill in/PFS night.

Good job Paizo, once again you have my appreciation and thanks for putting quality into these products.

I'm in the "keep on keeping on boat", with the caveat that Reckless had a good idea with cleaning up the CRB to make it even better. I just think Paizo has everything covered right now, and it's a one stop shopping place for your gaming needs, fantasy based anyway. The amount of sheer material out right now for Pathfinder is incredible, and only getting better by the day. These are quality products that tie in well together and I for one am very pleased with their customer service.

Now if they wanted to do something new, a Paizo created Sci-Fi game would be appealing to me. But I don't think my wallet could take it!

Quick question Vic although I'm not sure if this would be too spoilery to ask. Would this dragon per chance happen to coincide with the size of the dragon in Dragon's Demand? Thanks for any light you can shed on that for me.

P.S. Even if it isn't I'm still getting one lol. It's just too awesome to pass up.

P.P.S. And if you guys want to show more pictures of that from different angles I would not stop you in the least!

I don't know there might be a lot of cool info in the strategy guide book that even an advanced player might like. I wouldn't knock it until you hear more about it. Lord knows I've seen plenty of people make horrible builds that if it helps just a few of those it will be worth it lol.